Month: June, 2015

‘Why, of course, the people don’t want war… Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece… But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along… All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism… It works the same in any country.’—Hermann Göring, April 18th, 1946[1]

The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, (1945-6) indicted twenty-four Germans, of whom twenty-one ultimately sat in the dock.[2] Plucked from a shattered nation, interrogated constantly and largely held in solitary confinement, they represented those whom the victorious Allies deemed to be the most culpable remaining members of the National Socialist state. The prosecution of such a diverse range of men – from political figures to military personnel, to economic and industrial leaders – was an awkward task. International law was created and bent to suit purpose and the woolly charge of ‘Conspiracy’ was introduced to bind the cases together. Ultimately, after nearly a year of proceedings and a barrage of evidence from all four of the Allied nations, eleven men were sentenced to death [3], three received life sentences, two received twenty years, one fifteen and one ten. The other three defendants, Hjalmar Schacht, Hans Fritzsche and Franz von Papen were acquitted, although all were immediately rearrested and convicted by German denazification courts, receiving sentences of various lengths. At Nuremberg, there were no innocent men.

By the time the messy business of execution and disposal of remains had been concluded, the Trial of the Century presented the world with eleven dead Germans and three major conclusions. First of these was that it had punished aggression. The Nazis were aggressive. The Nazis were expansionist. The Nazis were to blame for World War Two. Secondly, it had punished tyranny. Nazi Germany had been a dictatorship, in which no recourse was made to the views of the people. It had assumed and consolidated power and imprisoned opponents. It had been totalitarian, ruthless and oppressive. Finally, the tribunal had punished ‘racism’. The Nazis had subscribed to racial ideology. They wanted to secure a future and land for the Nordic people. And rather than just moaning about it, like many before them, they had actively sought an answer to the ‘Jewish question’, through increasingly extreme means.

Or at least, those are the conclusions the world was supposed to believe.

The first of these stated aims of the Nuremberg lawmakers – to show that the waging of aggressive war had no place in the modern world, would need someone or something to arbitrate in such matters from that point on.

The United Nations, established in 1942, by Churchill and Roosevelt, officially became this arbiter. It is worth remembering that the organisation’s origins were in a collective term for the Allied nations – the ‘United Nations’ were initially the US, the UK, the USSR and France. Of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council these four, along with China, have remained the only permanent members.

A quick glance at the UN Charter shows some very Jacksonesque rhetoric, as its very first sentence, ‘We, the United Nations,’ it declares, ‘determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…’[4]

Just like so much of the posturing at the trial, it gives the impression that everything is being done from a high sense of altruism. Yet when one looks at the history of the last sixty-two years, since Göring et al’s ashes were thrown into a river, the UN’s influence on this matter is seen to be a dismal failure. It may be true that we have avoided lapsing into conflicts as catastrophic as World Wars One and Two and that Europe (or Central to Western Europe at least) has managed to live in relative peace but this would seem to be something of a smokescreen. We came perilously close to nuclear oblivion several times during the sixties and seventies, yet even setting this to one side, one nation in particular, with certain hangers-on has managed to repeatedly invade, bomb and commit a variety of civilian atrocities, sometimes involving chemical weapons, since the time the United Nations was formed. This leads us to open our eyes – and the perception of rather a grim reality.

With the defeat of Nazi Germany, the British Empire achieved its primary long-term aim, in maintaining the European balance of power. However it did so at enormous cost to itself. Britain has had to stand by, helpless, as its Empire has been dismantled. The UK has been thoroughly usurped as the world’s leading power by the United States, to whom it has become nothing more than an irrelevant ally.

Preperata’s Russo-German ‘Eurasian Embrace’[5] had been prevented from coming to fruition, but it was clear, that for the new western imperial power, more work would be needed to ensure stability at the top of the global hierarchy. Having thoroughly defeated Germany and criminalised its former regime, placing compliant satraps in charge of the nation, who were eager to please and only too happy to enforce the denazification purges expected of them, (Japan, shattered and demoralised by nuclear attack, was placed in a similar position of on-its-knees contrition) their attention turned to the Soviet Union and its influence. Suddenly, the great evil of Nazism began to fade into memory, only to be revived at such time when it would again become useful. Communism took over as the spectre at the window. ‘The Red Menace’ was everywhere.[6] In reality, this was nothing more than history repeating itself.

The western Allies, now firmly led by the United States, with the UK in a state of disrepair almost equalling that of the defeated powers, saw their only challenger on the world stage as Soviet Russia, who had been allowed to annexe most of Eastern Europe post war (not quite the Eurasian Embrace, but not far off) and had the potential to spread its influence into Asia and beyond. American foreign policy during the immediate post war years was formed with the sole purpose of limiting the spread of Communism as far as possible. This, of course, had nothing to do with ideology. They cared not a jot for the validity or otherwise of Marx’ theories, just as they cared nothing for the pros and cons of National Socialism. It was a simple matter of seeing off dangerous competition – the potential for an empire to challenge theirs.

As a result we saw the occupation of South Korea between 1945 and 1949, following a Communist uprising. During the same period US Marines were garrisoned in China as a protective force, as Communism threatened to take hold there too. From 1950 – 1953 American entanglement in Korea’s business evolved into the Korean War, in which, having seen China readily succumb to Mao’s cultural revolution, despite their presence, they responded to the attack of Communist North Korea against the South, eventually ensuring that half of Korea at least did not become a possible Soviet ally.

The infamous Vietnam War, which stretched from 1959-75 began, like Korea, as a reaction to attacks on US forces of occupation that had been there since 1955, who were trying to limit the spread of Communism filtering down from the North. Linked to the Vietnam conflict, we also saw the US engage in Laos between ‘62 and ‘75, supporting anti-communist forces there. Less well known, but undertaken for the same reason, was the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, in which US troops were sent in to act as a counter-revolutionary force against communist insurgents on the island.

Activity continued in Laos and Cambodia in 1968, with an American bombing campaign along the Ho Chi Minh trail. This tactic, heavily employed by the Allies in World War Two in the Pacific Theatre and against Germany, was to be used time and time again as the century progressed.

The propaganda picture became more complicated in 1967, with the Arab/Israeli Conflict, when the ghost of Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust was revived having receded into the recesses of the international consciousness. In 1973 this ghost was used to assist in the facilitation of Operation Nickel Grass, in which the United States came to Israel’s aid in the ‘Yom Kippur’ war. According to Norman Finkelstein, this was a key period in the birth of what is described in certain quarters as, ‘the new anti-Semitism’. This new anti-Semitism essentially refers to any form of criticism of the Zionist state of Israel, an important ally for the United States, within the volatile, mainly hostile, but oil-rich, Middle-East.[7]

Having stabilized the position with regard to their global superiority and with Soviet strength on the wane, direct economic concerns, never too far down the list of priorities of any great empire, began to take precedence. Oil, which in a very real way had replaced Gold as the trading currency of the world, was soaring in value. America’s attention thus turned to the ‘Libyan Socialism’ (not really Communism, but with some similarities) of Colonel Gadaffi, whose military coup had inconveniently disposed of oil-friendly King Idris. In 1981 there were several small incidents with Libya, as the United States took it upon themselves to enforce Libya’s contentious naval boundaries. This attempt at provocation failed, so in 1986, with one of the most transparent excuses in the history of international politics, President Ronald Reagan claimed that Gadaffi was responsible for a terrorist bomb attack at a German disco that killed two U.S. soldiers. Anyone who has followed world events in the last ten years will see familiarities in this story. Here, for the first time was a Muslim nation and accusations of them nurturing and encouraging terrorism, which they may have been doing, but their potential threat to world peace was propagandised out of all proportion. This led to Operation El Dorado Canyon on April 16th, 1986, when U.S. air and naval forces conducted bombing strikes on alleged ‘terrorist facilities’ and military installations in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. The action was roundly condemned by most of the world, with its only support coming from the UK, Australia and Israel. Unsurprisingly relations between these nations and Libya were frosty for many years but have recently healed to the point of Gadaffi agreeing to reopen Libyan oil to the west.

After Libya, international incidents of aggression continued unabated. In 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner and in 1989 the United States invaded the state of Panama in ‘Operation Just Cause’ to depose General Noriega who had, previously been on the payroll of the CIA, working to advance US interests in Central America. These were to prove to be only the preliminaries for the final aggressive acts of the twentieth century which would spill over into the twenty-first.

1991 saw the first Iraq or Gulf war. This oil-rich region was crucial to a western world thirsting after dwindling reserves. After its climax, US troops were stationed in Iraq with the official reason of counteracting ‘oppression of Kurdish people’. Yet Saddam Hussein’s regime remained in place and oppression continued, while American bombing of the region went on intermittently.

In 1998 President Clinton ordered military strikes against alleged terrorist sites in Afghanistan and in 2003, after the jolt provided by 9/11 in which a small band of mostly Saudi Arabian[8] extremists managed to live up to every line of US/Israeli ‘Islamo-fascist’ propaganda, the invasion of Afghanistan and then the second Iraq war were waged on the premise of harbouring terrorists and the possession of weapons of mass destruction. This happened despite mass protests in both the UK and the USA, disagreement within the international community and dissenting views within both national governments. Speaking in 2004, President Bush likened the ‘War on Terror’ to the fight against Nazism, saying, ‘Like the US involvement in World War II, the war on terror began with a surprise attack on the US. Like the murderous ideologies of the last century, the ideology of murderers reaches across borders.’

Yet, as is now well-known, weapons of mass destruction were never found and are now believed not to have existed. US and UK leaders blamed this mistake on poor intelligence, but the second conflict in Iraq was still ongoing as this article was being written, five years after its beginning. Estimates as to casualties vary. A report published in the British Medical Journal, ‘The Lancet’ in October 2006, said that up to that point, 654,965 Iraqis had met violent death as a result of coalition occupation. Over half of these, the study claimed, were women and children. A more recent survey, conducted by the British research group ORB stated that by September 2007, the figure was 1,220,580.[9] Other studies suggest lower figures. As a result of the war, some two million Iraqis have become refugees. Some analysts question the numbers, but even if they are wrong by a factor of two, which few believe, they are still highly significant. Remember too that this is only since 2003. The region has undergone sustained attack, largely through air strikes, since 1991. Total deaths are very difficult to calculate. A report by an organization called Medact, led by Beth Daponte, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, estimated over 150,000 civilian Iraqi deaths[10] either during or caused by the first Gulf War. A total figure for the intermediate period could not be found, although the investigative journalist, John Pilger, asserted that a 1999 report by Unicef calculated half a million Iraqi children who had, by that point, met their deaths through starvation or disease as a direct result of sanctions.[11]

Even if the figures can be quibbled with, it is clear that the human cost of the last sixteen years of action in Iraq has been enormous. The only purposes of this tragedy that are apparent are the establishment of American bases near the last world sources of easy-to-pump, high quality, surface oil, an attempt to create another oil-friendly regime in the region and the related matter of increased security for the state of Israel as it continues on its path to being the dominant nation of the Middle East.

One wonders, if at any point in the future this may be referred to as an Iraqi Holocaust? What, we might ask, have the ordinary people of Iraq done to deserve this slaughter? To which side of the conflict can we truthfully apply Mr Bush’s terminology of the ‘ideology of murderers’? [12]

In the face of sixty years of sustained aggression from the USA (the above events are only a small selection of their military endeavours since 1945) the United Nations has become a secondary factor in world affairs. Perhaps not even that. There is little they can do when a powerful nation chooses to pursue its own path.

It is impossible, after seeing what the main player behind Nuremberg has been doing since, to believe in the sincerity of their expressed aims at the trial. A nation which claimed it wanted to save the world from the scourge of war and which gave death sentences to eleven men it deemed to be guilty of starting one has had a foreign policy based on little other than aggression and the rule of force ever since.
Another stark contradiction of Nuremberg and the United Nations’ professed yearnings for peace can be found in a state it was instrumental in helping to create. Since its inception in 1948, the State of Israel has provided the ‘homeland for the Jewish people’ that Wise, Weizmann, Untermeyer and others had been campaigning for many years. Conversely, the time between then and now is referred to by the Palestinian people as the Naqba (tragedy). The development of this tragedy has implications when analysed in the wake of Nuremberg. Repeated British statements in both the White Papers on Palestine (1922 and 1939) established initial plans for accommodating Zionist demands.

‘Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become ‘as Jewish as England is English.’ His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab delegation, the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.’ In this connection it has been observed with satisfaction that at a meeting of the Zionist Congress, the supreme governing body of the Zionist Organization, held at Carlsbad in September, 1921, a resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims ‘the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community, the upbuilding of which may assure to each of its peoples an undisturbed national development.’[13]

Initially then, the idea of the British Mandate was for the Jewish population already in the region, together with Jewish immigrants from Europe, to become part of a Palestinian state in which both Arabs and Jews would coexist. This vision met with agreement from both sides. By 1948 however, following the events of the war and repeated agitation from Zionist leaders like Weizmann, who apparently found the idea of living alongside Arabs distasteful, and the withdrawal of the British who were suffering from attacks on their troops from both sides, this had become a two state solution. The representatives of the Palestinian people did not agree to this partition of their territory and this resulted in the Israeli war of independence, in which the new state of Israel occupied even more of the region than had been originally proposed. During the occupation of this territory, the Palestinian communities of the area simply disappeared, either killed or forcibly ejected from their homes and turned into refugees. Norman Finkelstein described this process as one of ethnic cleansing and stated that it was not a matter that could be under dispute ‘the scholarly debate now focused on the much narrower, if still highly pertinent question of whether this cleansing was the intentional consequence of Zionist policy or the unintentional by-product of war.’[14] Bearing in mind that what is being described is an occupying power murdering and mistreating civilians, it would seem that Finkelstein is outlining something similar to the ‘intentionalism v functionalism’ debate which for many years dominated academic discourse about the Holocaust. Add to this the numerous allegations of torture and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli hands and Israel’s brutal put-downs of Palestinian uprisings, where youths throwing stones are met with machine guns and tanks, and it can be seen that the victims of Nazi evil, just like its conquerors, are more than prepared to create their own atrocities, to act aggressively and to commit violations of human rights when it suits them.

Nuremberg’s other conclusions fare little better. Issues related to the practice of modern, representative democracy are too numerous to be dealt with in this article. For now it will suffice to say that there is much about it that is very undemocratic. The media, wealthy elites and special interest groups all wield subversive influence. The ideal of rule by the people, for the people is as distant as ever. It is not necessarily a system that the west should be exporting to the rest of the world, especially when such export seems to be largely conducted via guns and bombs. If there is a genuine moral obligation to force other nations to adopt representative democracy through violence, then it is not one that is readily apparent.

Racism too, is a sticky topic for the victorious powers. Although the American Jewish community have thrived, post war, to the point where despite only comprising two percent of the population, nearly fifty percent of the nation’s billionaires are Jewish[15], other minorities do not fare so well. Twenty Four percent of blacks live below the poverty line in the States, for example, as opposed to eight percent of whites.[16] Three percent of the black male population of the United States is in prison, as compared to less than half a percent for whites.[17] Tokenistic, yet powerful evidence of America’s racial divide was also provided by the pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. The scenes, broadcast worldwide, showed a form of economic apartheid, whereby the black underclass found themselves bereft and stranded, while the rest of the population escaped. As, apparently, race is only skin deep and theories of racial difference are evil and automatically lead to exterminating millions in death camps, we cannot ascribe any of this to racial difference. These kinds of discrepancies can only be the result of an utterly racist American society. It should be remembered too that immediately after Nuremberg and until the 1960s, racial segregation was still official policy in the southern states.

This means that when looking at the aftermath of Nuremberg, we are faced with a situation in which the three great evils of Nazi Germany, for which it was put on trial before the world, were all conducted, for years afterwards, to varying degrees by the main prosecuting power and its closest allies. There is a word for this sort of thing. And it is ‘hypocrisy’.

It is clear that the real result of Nuremberg was a world order built on moral hypocrisy. The victors glossed over their war crimes and socio-political shortcomings and continue to do so, while overplaying those of the enemy. They did this, a la Göring, to sway public opinion in favour of their imperial agenda. And it has worked. A few examples from recent history will suffice to show how readily people have accepted this ethos as their own.

In his State of the Union Address before Congress on January 29th 2002, President George W Bush famously described North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an ‘Axis of Evil.’[18] ‘States like these, and their terrorist allies,’ he said ‘constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.’ Just over a year later, in March 2003, the war in Iraq began.

On the 24th of September, 2007, one of Bush’s Axes of Evil, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Iran, arrived at Columbia University in New York to speak to the students and faculty. His visit provoked a full day of intense protest from massed crowds who believed that giving a platform to the man who denied the Holocaust and said ‘Israel should be wiped off the map’ was to provide him with credibility. It should be pointed out here that these views, falsely attributed to Ahmadinejad by the media, result more from alarmist editing and misquotation than a genuine attempt to engage with his statements. Ahmadinejad’s repeated line on the Holocaust is that it should not be regarded as immune to examination and re-interpretation, which is an eminently reasonable standpoint. He has never actually denied it. The Arab news network, Al Jazeera, quoted the Iranian President as saying:

‘they (the governments of the west) have fabricated a legend under the name of the Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves…If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream.’[19 ]

The idea of the Holocaust being a ‘myth’ or a ‘legend’ is one that he has often expressed, but this does not necessarily mean he believes the whole narrative is pure invention. After all, most ‘myths’ or ‘legends’ contain a core of fact.

In a 2006 interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, he further defined his position:

‘If the Holocaust took place in Europe, one also has to find the answer to it in Europe. On the other hand, if the Holocaust didn’t take place, why then did this regime of occupation (Israel)… come about? Why do the European countries commit themselves to defending this regime? Permit me to make one more point. We are of the opinion that if a historical occurrence conforms to the truth, this truth will be revealed all the more clearly if there is more research into it and more discussion about it….We don’t want to confirm or deny the Holocaust. We oppose every type of crime against any people. But we want to know whether this crime actually took place or not. If it did, then those who bear the responsibility for it have to be punished, and not the Palestinians. Why isn’t research into a deed that occurred 60 years ago permitted? After all, other historical occurrences, some of which lie several thousand years in the past, are open to research…’[20]

It is clear that Ahmadinejad is not making statements of Holocaust denial, but rather is expressing doubts and asking questions of the obelisk which has been constructed around it, in particular its effect on the people of Palestine. This leads on to his line on Israel, which has been similarly misrepresented. According to Juan Cole, the Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad really said, in Farsi, that ‘the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,’[21] still an anti-Israel statement, which should surprise no-one, but hardly as exciting as ‘wiping Israel off the map’ with its obvious whiff of (nuclear?) obliteration. It clearly has occurred to few commentators that if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, they would also be killing the Palestinian people there, whom they are seeking to defend. There is therefore no logical basis for this belief, at all. Yet this faulty translation has been repeated ad nauseam around the world and used by American neo-Conservatives to justify the escalation of hostile rhetoric towards Iran. When it is borne in mind that Iran has huge oil reserves, confirmed at 135 billion barrels and one of the world’s largest supplies of natural gas,[22] this antagonistic process takes on an eerily familiar air.

Based on this misrepresentation of his public statements, the crowd at Columbia shouted slogans and waved placards. One student handed out flyers of the Saudi Arabian terrorist leader, Osama Bin Laden, with the caption ‘Too bad Bin Laden is not available.’[23] In response to these protests, the Columbia University President, Lee C. Bollinger decided to play to the gallery by taking to the lectern just before Ahmadinejad and saying, ‘Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,’ adding, to cheers from the audience, ‘You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.’

Ahmadinejad responded with considerable dignity, saying, ‘In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given, to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty…Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.’

This episode has not been reported here as an attempt to offer support to Ahmadinejad or the Iranian regime but to demonstrate how the Nuremberg-created culture of political correctness and our childish reactions to what we regard as political evil are stifling the breadth of discourse in western society. Another recent example of this took place at Oxford University on November 27th 2007, when the historian, David Irving and the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, were scheduled to appear in debate at the Union Building. The level of protest at their appearance was such that the debate could not proceed as planned and the two speakers had to be diverted into separate rooms to conduct isolated ‘mini debates’.

In an article in which Irving was nonsensically described as ‘a historian who denied the Holocaust ever happened’[24], the BBC confirmed that hundreds of protestors blocked the entrance to the Union building and at one point fifty gained entry and prevented whatever debate was taking place from continuing.[25] Comments from some of the protestors indicated the reasons for their anger. They chanted ‘Go home Nazi scum!’ and ‘BNP – off our streets!’ ‘This has nothing to do with free speech,’ said one, bizarrely, ‘it’s about giving credibility to fascists, making them appear to be part of the mainstream.’ For such illogic to work, we would need to infer that those responsible for organizing the chamber debates at the Oxford Union have some kind of pro-fascist agenda.

When reading about these occurrences, one has to force oneself to remember that this is not starving mobs, rallying against oppressors in some desperate third world dictatorship we are talking about, but crowds, mostly comprised of young academics, at two of the foremost seats of learning in the world. Yet these individuals, rather than investigating the people they are attacking, rather than engaging them in discussion and countering their arguments with their own views, would prefer to simply see them silenced. The irony, lost on most of them, is that they feel able to do this in one breath and decry ‘fascism’ in the next. What is silencing of political opponents and stifling of controversial views if not fascistic?

What is even more worrying is that these people, comprising what could be described as our future intellectual elite, are happy to shout and scream and denounce from a position of ignorance. They have simply bought into the image of the evil enemy painted for them by the media.

Such knee-jerk condemnation is also evidenced by the attitude of colleagues and students to Arthur Butz, one of the world’s most notorious ‘Holocaust deniers,’ and author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry (1974). Butz also happens to be a tenured Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois. As a result of his published work, which obviously has nothing to do with his teaching position, he has been subjected to a sustained campaign to have him sacked. According to a letter printed in the Chicago Tribune, on February 17th 2006, Sixty-one of Butz’s colleagues in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science published a petition in which they called for Butz to ‘leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence.’ None of them however, were prepared to offer any details regarding Butz’ book and where, precisely they felt he was in error or guilty of falsification. Students at the University followed suit by starting the ‘Never Again’ campaign, which, on the 30th November 2007, had 10,032 signatures. The campaign described Butz as ‘offensive and historically inaccurate’ and stated, ‘The goal of students, faculty, alumni, and others offended by Arthur Butz’s denial of the Holocaust should not be to prove him wrong. Debating Mr Butz in any type of forum would dignify his claims. Lending credibility and dignity to Arthur Butz by engaging him in debate would be equally offensive as his views are to begin with.’[26]

Obviously, in the minds of his attackers, something about Butz’ work makes him worthy of this sort of vilification. But by the kind of specious reasoning outlined above, whereby Butz is claimed to be ‘historically inaccurate’, yet no specifics are ever mentioned, the campaigners avoid ever having to address any particular claim in the book, in any way. One wonders how many of them have even read it.

The bottom line, as it applies to all three situations described above, regardless of where anybody may stand on the memory/denial continuum, is that University is simply not meant to work on that level. It is supposed to be about investigation, honest analysis, intellectual freedom and open debate. That’s how we learn.

But political correctness has put an end to that.

Probably the most striking evidence of the hypocritical culture that Nuremberg created is contained within the treatment of those still pursued for their guilt on its charges. The chain of trials triggered by the IMT has continued into the very recent past, with possibilities of more in the near future. Operation Last Chance, a joint project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Targum Shlishi Foundation, was launched in July 2002 as ‘a campaign to bring remaining Nazi war criminals to justice by offering financial rewards for information leading to their arrest and conviction.’[27] They give an example of the kind of individual they are targeting, by writing, on their home page, in November 2007, ‘If he is still alive, former SS medical officer Aribert Heim is 93 years old, but his age will not protect the alleged Nazi war criminal from justice…’

It goes on to relate that a bounty of nearly half a million dollars has been placed on Heim, a Mauthausen doctor who was first indicted in 1962 and fled Germany for South America. There are, obviously, question marks over the legitimacy of trying a 93 year old for alleged crimes committed more than sixty years ago. However, under international law, there is no statute of limitations allowed by any state on Crimes against Humanity.[28] Strictly speaking then, although perhaps many might doubt the value of rounding up nonagenarians, it would seem it does have a legal basis and therefore cannot be questioned. The state of Israel has been something of a prime mover on the matter, as one might expect, as shown by the farcical goings on surrounding John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian/American auto-worker from Cleveland, who was accused of being the sadistic Treblinka guard ‘Ivan the Terrible’.

When evidence came their way regarding Demjanjuk’s wartime activities, the Israeli government argued forcibly for deportation and Demjanjuk was extradited and tried in Israel, in 1993, where he was positively identified by five former Treblinka inmates, who swore they had seen him in the vicinity of the camp’s gas chamber. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. After spending five years on Israel’s death row, he was eventually exonerated when it emerged that the American Justice department had ‘fraudulently withheld evidence…to curry favour with Jewish organizations.’[29] The judges concluded that the Office for Special Investigation (a section of the Justice department especially set up to investigate Nazi war criminals) and the prosecutors had ‘acted with reckless disregard for the truth.’[30] A Treblinka Nazi identity card, supposedly his, was, quite simply, a forgery. Demjanjuk had never even been to Treblinka. What this says about the quality of eyewitness testimony speaks for itself.

His ordeal looks set to repeat itself however, as continued pressure has seen him indicted again, in 2007, this time not for being ‘Ivan the Terrible’ but for being a regular guard at several other Nazi camps. (He was actually captured while fighting for the Red Army and conscripted by the Nazis as a camp guard. Perhaps he is doubly evil therefore, having managed to be both a Commie and a Nazi.) At the time this book was being written, Demjanjuk, now 87 and having already served five years in Israel on false charges, was appealing extradition for another trial in the Ukraine.

To gain a full picture of the legal climate created by Nuremberg, however, we probably ought to compare Demjanjuk’s case to one that is similar, to see if any conclusions can be drawn.

Salomon Morel was a Polish Jew who emigrated to Israel. During the expulsions that occurred post-war, when twelve million Germans were forced from their homes, via camps, to the newly diminished German state, Morel was the commandant of the Zgoda concentration camp in Świętochłowice, Poland. While in charge there it is alleged that Morel maintained an utterly brutal regime, in which food and medical supplies were provided to him, but purposely withheld from the inmates and conditions were contrived to be as unsanitary as possible. It is also alleged that he personally tortured and murdered prisoners. Estimates vary, but usually range from between one and a half to two thousand people killed by Morel during his time in charge. Several thousand more suffered horribly under his regime. The inmates were predominately civilians, including women and children. Like Heim, Morel fled when it became clear that Polish authorities intended to prosecute him, (to Israel in 1992) but at this point, his and the other stories mentioned above diverge.

Astonishingly, Israel refused to extradite Morel, despite repeated requests from Poland, the last of which was made in 2005.[31] In a bizarre piece of justification, their first refusals were based on a claim that the statute of limitations on War Crimes had run out. Poland then tried again, having redefined Morel’s charge as Crimes against Humanity. With complete disregard for international law and the precedent set on many occasions by themselves, Israel refused again, suggesting even that Morel’s prosecution was part of an anti-Semitic conspiracy. The Polish Institute for National Remembrance then issued a terse statement in which they reminded the Israeli government of the pressure they and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre had applied to foreign governments to extradite aged Nazis and promised to revisit the matter. The whole affair recently drew to a close with Morel dying quietly in his bed in Israel, safely cocooned from legal harassment. This can be contrasted with recent developments in the Demjanjuk case,[32] in which the decrepit Ukrainian lost his appeal against extradition to Germany in April 2009, amidst a barrage of negative publicity, meaning that he will shortly be flown to Europe to stand trial once again.

The double standard here is clear to any but the most blinkered of observers and is illustrative of Nuremberg’s influence on the post war world. The gilded, pseudo-moralistic rhetoric employed by the prosecution, referring time and time again to the defendants’ wickedness and depravity in order to justify the actions of their own states, has spawned a culture in which America and its close allies call the shots and are the ethical arbiters.

Good guys and bad guys. White hats and black. And those who have cast themselves as the heroes (or victims) believe they can do no wrong, provided they do so under the guise of ‘fighting evil’

Notes:

Mark Turley is a writer from London, UK. In 2008 he published his second full length work, ‘From Nuremberg to Nineveh’ from which this article is drawn. He is currently working on another project, about Anglo-American imperialism, to be published by the Progressive Press. Extracts from his books and other writings can be found at http://www.markturley.com

[5] The Political Economist, Guido Giacomo Preperata described a possible union between Russia and Germany, either by alliance or conquest as the ‘Eurasian Embrace’. From the 19th century it had been a priority of Anglo-America to prevent this from happening as such as an alliance would have carte blanche to rule the world. Preperata, Guido Giacomo Conjuring Hitler, How Britain and America Made the Third Reich (Pluto Press 2005) p. 8-15

[6] This is the title of a movie made in 1949.

[7] Finkelstein, Norman, Beyond Chutzpah, On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, (Verso, 2005), p. 24

[8] It is worth remembering that oil rich Saudi Arabia is an American ally.

[12] Selected details of US military action since 1945 taken from Blum, William, Killing Hope, Military and CIA interventions since World War Two (Zed books, 2003) and Allman, TD, Rogue State, America at war with the World, (Nation books, 2004)

[24] The statement is either ignorantly or deliberately misleading. Irving denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, nothing else. He even accepts the existence of other gas chambers at Treblinka, Sobibor and Majdanek. He is therefore, in no way, a ‘denier’. Such repeated inaccuracy of reporting is symptomatic of the sheer tonnage of misinformation that surrounds this subject.

This is a fresh look at why the same powerful Jews who support Israel as a “Jewish State” do everything they can to create a fractured society in nations they live in outside of Israel.

Why Zionists preach one thing for Jews and the direct opposite for Gentiles. Mass immigration, multiculturalism and diversity makes any society vulnerable to the most organized, aggressive, ethnic people on earth. Their leaders know that that their team effort gives a huge advantage over a fractured, atomized society. Diversity is a weapon.

In this video, I give direct evidence of the Zionist technique for dominating a society.

The Year 1937 – Part 6

I‘ve spoken often with you about the Jewish monopoly control of our mass media of news and entertainment. Recently I detailed the takeover of the Disney company by Jews and its conversion into an instrument of brainwashing used against young Americans.

In addition to this consolidation of Jewish control over the media, there’s another subversive campaign underway in this country which is just as dangerous for our future. It’s the campaign to stifle any expression of opinion except those coming from the Jew-controlled mass media: the campaign to outlaw all dissident voices.

When I’ve mentioned this campaign in the past, some people have thought I was being an alarmist. They believe that freedom of speech is too deeply rooted in American soil to be done away with by a few extremists in the Clinton administration, or any administration. The American people won’t tolerate having their freedom of speech taken away, they believe.

I wish that I could share their optimism. What makes it difficult for me to do so is the fact that there is a growing body of opinion in America that no one should have the right to do or say anything which offends someone else. The people who believe this are not only entrenched in the Clinton administration, they’re entrenched in the Congress, in the universities, and in many other American institutions. These people will tell you with a straight face that the First Amendment was never meant to protect offensive speech — or what they more often these days call — hate speech. The Constitution doesn’t give anyone the right to hurt someone else’s feelings, they say. It doesn’t give anyone the right to offend someone else. It doesn’t give anyone the right to say unkind things about someone else, so that other people might be influenced by what is said and then in turn think or say unkind things themselves — perhaps even do something unkind.

Actually, what these Politically Correct people really mean, although they won’t tell you this — what they really mean is that no one should be permitted to write or say anything which might offend one of the officially favored classes of people: homosexuals, morally or physically defective people, Jews, Blacks or members of other non-White racial groups, and women. They see nothing wrong with offending a White male, for example: they do it themselves all the time. But they do believe that it ought to be illegal to do or say something offensive to almost anyone else.

Let me tell you about something which happened last month in Ottawa. I’m reading from a news article in the August 5 issue of the Toronto Sun. It says:

‘A female Ottawa dentist who wore a facemask, gloves, and gown while treating an HIV-positive patient is facing charges of discrimination by the Ontario Human Rights Commission…. Medical history revealed that the patient was HIV-positive and had a past drug dependency, according to an Ontario Dental Association report. Before treating the patient in the two and one half hour visit, the dentist discussed with the patient her preference to wear a disposable gown, gloves, facemask, and eye protection while treating the patient. Following completion of the treatment the patient left without any negative comment about the care he received and booked for a six-month checkup.’

That’s the first part of the Toronto Sun story. The dentist and the patient talked things over before the treatment began; the dentist then put on her disposable gown, gloves, and so on to protect herself from the blood and saliva of the AIDS-infected patient; and after the treatment the patient left with no complaint.

But then one of the Politically Correct watchdogs of the Human Rights Commission heard about it, and things changed in a hurry. The Toronto Sun article continues:

‘Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Royal College of Dental Surgeons say in a report that the dentist acted in a discriminatory manner when she wore a paper gown in addition to her barrier protection gear, based solely on the patient’s HIV status.’

The news article went on to say that the dentist must not treat a patient with AIDS in any way differently from a healthy patient. If she doesn’t wear a paper gown in treating healthy patients, then it is discriminatory to wear one when working on an AIDS-infected patient’s teeth.

The article continues:

‘The Ontario Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against the dentist unless she complies with eight conditions, including paying the patient $8,000 to “compensate him for his mental anguish.”

Well, you say, that was Canada, not the United States.

Let me tell you, the people of Canada are not really very different from the people of the United States. What they will let their government get away with now, we’ll let our government get away with in five or ten years. America already is swarming with Human Relations Councils and Human Rights Councils, whose business it is to sniff out cases of AIDS carriers who have had their feelings hurt by some insensitive person who refused to treat them as if they were healthy. And believe me, every one of these Human Rights Councils in the United States is just itching to have the judicial power to order people locked up who say or do anything they don’t like.

I have another newspaper article in front of me, this one from the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune for July 23. It describes a ruling issued by an official of the Minneapolis city government, warning city workers that henceforth they may be disciplined for what the official calls “visual harassment.” By “visual harassment” the official means looking at any female who does not want to be looked at. A woman had complained to the official, he said, that it made her “uncomfortable” that members of city work crews had stared at her as she walked past them. The name of the official who decided that such looking would henceforth result in disciplinary action is, believe it or not, Carl Markus. Not Marx, just Markus.

Now that would just be funny, if it were an isolated case. But things just as ridiculous, just as Orwellian, are happening every day in America. The people who want to get rid of the First Amendment — and the rest of the Bill of Rights too — the people who want to make it illegal to say or do anything which might offend an AIDS carrier or a feminist with a chip on her shoulder or whatever — are probing, pushing, trying to see what they can get away with, trying to see how far they can go, how much the American people will tolerate. The two articles I’ve quoted from today I chose as examples because of the air of absurdity to them which makes them a little catchy, a little memorable. But I have a hundred more news articles from the past few months which in more prosaic terms describe the same sort of efforts to outlaw offensiveness, or “hate, as it’s often called.

Perhaps I should say at this point that I understand what it means to be offended and to have one’s feelings hurt. I’ve worn glasses since I was five years old, and it used to hurt my feelings when some of my school classmates would call me “four eyes.” I used to do pretty well in my school work too, and as a result occasionally one of the kids who didn’t do so well would refer to me sneeringly as “Einstein.” That really made me feel uncomfortable.

And I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for a person who’s overweight to hear herself called “fatso.” I’m sure it makes a retarded person feel bad to be told he’s stupid. I’m sure that a person who’s not attractive doesn’t like to be reminded of that fact.

But, you know, that’s life. We all put up with a lot of things we don’t like. We try to make the best of it. If we’re fat and we don’t like being called fatso, we try to lose some weight. If we’re nearsighted and have to wear glasses, perhaps we can switch to contact lenses — or take karate lessons and punch out anybody who calls us “four eyes.”

There’s really something seriously wrong with the people who believe that it should be illegal to hurt a homosexual’s feelings, or to stare at a pretty girl — or to call a person who wears glasses “four eyes,” for that matter. Some of these people clearly believe that it’s more important for us all to be able to feel good about ourselves all the time than it is for us to be free.

And some of these people are simply using the “feel good” faction to push their own agenda, which is to make it impossible for the few people who have figured out what they’re up to tell the rest of the people. They want to make it illegal to tell people about the Jewish control of the news and entertainment media, for example. They want to make it illegal for this program to be on the air. They call this program “hate radio,” because it is offensive to them.

What makes me worry so much is that the “feel good” faction is growing. There’s something unhealthy about life in America today, and it’s making more and more people really believe that they have a right not to be offended or have their feelings hurt, and that that supposed right is more important than the right to free speech. And the folks who are taking advantage of this sickness by pushing the idea that offensive speech or hate speech ought to be outlawed are becoming more pushy in their efforts.

Back in 1978 I wrote a novel which I called The Turner Diaries. It’s a novel about life in the United States as I imagined it might be in the 1990s, if some of the trends I could see in the 1970s continued for another 20 years. I imagined that the government would become more repressive, and it has. I imagined that most of the people would react in a sheeplike way to government repression and would not complain as long as they could still be comfortable and feel good, and that’s the way it’s turned out. And I imagined that a few people would not react like sheep, but instead would fight back violently — and a few have. In writing my novel, I really tried to be realistic, and to speak my mind completely. I didn’t rewrite any part of my book or leave out any part because I thought it might be offensive to some people — and, of course, it has been.

I have a clipping here from the July 14 issue of The Jewish Press, which is published in New York City and which describes itself as the world’s largest circulation English-language Jewish newspaper. It’s a story about what the folks at The Jewish Press see as a need to “close the loopholes in the U. S. Constitution,” as they so nicely put it. And it’s a story about the novel I wrote. I’ll read you a couple of paragraphs from this story in The Jewish Press:

‘The radical right is taking advantage of the Republican victory in Congress to push its own agenda in defiance of the principles that have made the United States a haven for persecuted minorities, a beacon of freedom, justice, and liberty to all people. Unfortunately, the man-made laws under which we operate are like a two-edged sword, offering opportunity to all elements of society to achieve their goals but also similar rights for all to speak their minds even when it contravenes the very essence of tolerance and democracy. One glaring example of this attempt to exploit the loopholes in the U.S. Constitution to bring prejudice and racism in their most vicious forms to public attention is the publication in 1978 of a book called The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald, the pseudonym of William L Pierce, a former professor of physics and research scientist . . . . Pierce’s book, which surpasses Mein Kampf in its virulent anti-Semitism, has sold more than 187,000 copies. It describes an end-of-the-century scenario in which the Jewish dominated government is overthrown by the Organization, an underground white group which succeeds where Nazism failed. . . . Our first reaction . . . is that even in the United States there must be a limit to such abuse of so-called freedom of speech. We have enough experience with vicious racists to justify some control over their actions.’

Did you note the phrase “so-called freedom of speech”? These folks at The Jewish Press really would like for the government to prohibit the writing and publication of novels with plots they find offensive or hateful.

I have another newspaper clipping, this one from the August 23 edition of the Fulton County Daily Report. It’s an editorial written by two radical feminists, one a law professor and the other a law student at Northwestern University. Like The Jewish Press these two women also focus on my novel The Turner Diaries. They urge that the laws of our land be changed so that I and others who write books they find offensive can be prosecuted — or at least sued for the damage they claim our writing causes. In my case, they allege that the person or persons who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City earlier this year were caused to do so by reading The Turner Diaries, and so therefore I should be sued for all of the deaths and property loss caused by that act. And, of course, the same for other books which they allege caused people to do harmful things or which offend people — and, believe me, these women and their friends on the Human Rights Councils are easily offended. And they are quick to see a cause-and-effect relationship between written words or an image in a book and criminal acts by people who read those words. They take it for granted that literature which they consider demeaning to women causes men to rape women. I’ll read you just a little of their article:

‘Even under current constitutional law, all speech is not equally protected regardless of content. The test is whether the harm caused by the speech is so grave that it outweighs the benefits of protecting its authors from liability. Usually the answer is no. This delicate balancing of interests, however, depends upon judgments about the severity of the harm, not on some absolute legal protection for all things written. Wrapping William Pierce in the fabric of the First Amendment ensures that there is a class of harms occasioned by violent and hate-filled images — insults, threats, beatings, rapes, and killings — that remain immune from ordinary legal consequence, even when cause and effect are plainly evident. In reality, if not in First Amendment theory, there persists a connection between image, incitement, and violence: crossburnings and lynchings, yellow stars and deportations, pornography and rape, The Turner Diaries and Oklahoma City.’

Well, it’s pretty clear what these two feminists have in mind, even if they don’t come right out and say it. They want to make it illegal for you or for me to insult or offend them or someone in solidarity with them — or, barring that, they want to be able to sue us for saying something which hurts the feelings of an AIDS carrier or a homosexual or a feminist or a member of one of the other officially protected minorities. They say, in effect, “Look, if we let William Pierce get away with writing books like The Turner Diaries just because of this obsolete legal fiction called the First Amendment, then we’ll also have to put up with all sorts of other insults and hatefilled images.”

I don’t know what sort of insults have so rankled these two feminist lawyers, but it’s pretty clear that they’re rankled. I wouldn’t worry about that so much, except that I’m afraid that the number of feel-good trendies who’ll fall for their argument to abolish the First Amendment is growing. Worse than that, I worry that too many of the rest of us will just sit on our hands and let the anti- Constitutional lynch mob have its way.

And, you know, politicians keep up with these trends too. They read the newspapers. They take polls. If they believe that the majority of Americans will fight to keep their rights, then the politicians won’t mess with them. They’ll even make speeches about how much they love the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment. But as soon as they figure that the people won’t fight for their rights, they’ll be leading the lynch mob and making speeches about the need to protect people from being offended or harmed by hateful speech.

And what I’ve just said applies to nearly all politicians and their camp followers, not just to the Clintonistas. It applies to Republicans and conservatives at least as much as it applies to Democrats and liberals. I have another newspaper article, with an essay by Robert Bork, the very conservative legal scholar who was hounded out of his Supreme Court nomination a few years ago because of his conservatism. Mr. Bork now says that we need to reinterpret the First Amendment, so that it does not protect hateful speech. I don’t know what appointment Mr. Bork has his eye on now, but that’s what the man is saying.

It all boils down to this: Nobody in this country, or anywhere else, has any inalienable rights: not the right to free speech or freedom of religion or assembly, not the right to keep and bear arms, not the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. There always will be scoundrels who will try to take away your rights if they believe they can get away with it. And there always will be fools who will let them do it. The only rights that we have, the only rights that we can depend on, are those that we are willing and able to fight for, to shed blood for. And that’s what it’s coming to in this country very soon.

Now you’ve heard it. Now I want you think about it. And then I want you to start getting ready for what’s coming.

If we can still speak about a European culture (civilization), it is the achievement of a highly developed, blonde and bright-eyed race which even at the misty dawn of time sent its surplus blood south to the Mediterranean and further to North Africa and the depths of the Asian continent. Their strength later allowed the peoples of the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, and the Indians to develop their creativity in marvelous ways. The Germans too descended from this noble Nordic race, whom the historian Tacitus praised highly even as his own people was collapsing. In the midst of the world’s turmoil, the German people are the last stronghold of European civilization, thanks to the continuing effect of the German people’s inherited Germanic blood.

It is therefore not surprising that decent German civilization found it impossible to accept stories of the horrible crimes of Bolshevism in the twentieth century, even though they had been foretold by the prophets of our age. This reluctance grounded both in innate decency and in the experience with Russian POWs working in Germany in the last four years has led even some Germans to believe that Bolshevism’s inhumanity was only lying propaganda. But as the Bolshevist flood broke into Eastern areas of the German Reich and many thousands of Germans were witnesses of reality, the danger that Bolshevism could benefit from German self-deception has finally disappeared.

As we heard reports of the crimes of Bolshevist soldiers in the countries to our southeast, professional doubters and deniers said that they would only believe what they saw themselves or heard from eyewitnesses. Now that the horror in the East can be read in the faces of its victims, and after they have testified in German war courts, even the most determined doubters and deniers must recognize reality (to their own shame). This reality is mass murder and mass rape.

In the First World War, too, Russian army units broke into German territory, but no historian or German charged them with systematic mass rapes of German women and girls or the planned slaughter of men or their enslavement. What is the difference between then and now?

Have the Russian people become animals since the First World War? What has happened to Russia that proves the correctness of those who for many years have told the Germans and an innocent world that a monster was rising to the East, a monster that would rip into the peoples of Europe and destroy what we once called European civilization? There has been injustice as long as humans have existed, and the resulting dissatisfaction. And for as long people have established governments that they believed would benefit them. Those revolutions were natural as long as they resulted from a people’s community of blood and civilization. But from the moment that the revolutions were led by blood-unrelated forces in the pursuit of selfish supra-national interests, these revolutions proved to be crimes against the independent life of the peoples. The leaders of the Bolshevist revolution in Russia were members of the Jewish people who followed the Biblical injunction: “You shall devour the peoples of the earth!” Only he who knows this understands why the Red Army that has broken into Reich German territory is a beast. According to the New Testament, the Jews were murderers and criminals from the beginning. As it was in the Old Testament era, so it is today wherever the Jewish will has led them and their Bolshevist soldiers to seek their victims. In the 4th Book of Moses 31:14 it says:

Moses grew angry at the leadership of the army … and spoke to them: Why have you left all the women alive … strangle all the male children and all the women who are not virgins, but you may bring those female who have not slept with a man to your tents.

Just as the Jewish leader Moses ordered his forces to do to the conquered peoples thousands of years ago, so today the Red soldiers under the command of Jewry behave today wherever they reach through treachery or force: Men are murdered or shipped abroad as slaves, women and girls are raped and defiled!

“You shall devour the peoples!” How incomprehensible is the pious order of the “god” Jehovah to the Jews! In our day it has become clear as the Red slave army of World Jewry has broken into the heart of Europe! When this terrible war finally ends, the spirits of the murdered and tortured will rise from their mass graves in eternal accusation. The millions of faces of Cain, bastards brought into the world, will join the accusations. A horror will spread across the world, driving into the hearts of all those who did not want to hear or see at a time when the misery could still have been halted!

The Year 1937 – Part 5

Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz from 1940 – 1943 was captured by the British on March 13, 1946. Affadavits written and signed in English were forced from Höss on several occasions. Although in regard to the charges of “crimes against humanity” Höss was arguably the most important prisoner, his role at Nuremberg was not as one of the convicted by as a defense witness for Ernest Kaltenbrunner. Today Höss’ confession obtained through torture along with his testimony at Nuremberg and his later “memoirs” written while awaiting execution in a Polish prison cell make up some of the most important evidence to support the Holocaust story. Establishment historians tend to ignore the methods used to obtain the Höss “confessions.” Revisionist historians have argued for years that the Höss “confessions” are basically worthless due to how they were obtained.

Since so much of the Höss testimony was derived for a court of law or became part of the legal record, it is only fair that the proper legal implications of his torture, which included threats to his direct family members, be reviewed.

Threats to Höss’ Family

Point 1:

“In 1884, the Court reviewed a federal criminal conviction in Hopt v. People of Territory of Utah, 110 US 574. It explicitly recognized that there was a common law rule prohibiting the use of confessions obtained by inducements, promises and threats. Because of their inherent unreliability, such confessions were not admitted into evidence.”

Protection against confessions obtained by inducements, promises and threats subsequently was enlarged so that protection against all involuntary confessions was provided. (See: Ziang Sung Wan v. United States, 266 US, 1 (1924)

Höss beaten by his Captors-a flashlight shoved down his throat

Point 2: In Brown vs. Mississippi, 297 US 278 (1936) :

“Summarily reversing convictions obtained in the state court, the Supreme Court found that severe whippings, used to procure confession from helpless defendants, made the confessions involuntary and violated basic due process rights. In reaching its decision, the Court emphasized the unreliability of confessions extracted by torture and, referred to the confessions in Brown as “spurious.”

Hoess Deprived Of Sleep And Harassed

Point 3: In considering circumstances of physical deprivation or mistreatment, the Court not only disapproved of severe brutality like that found in Brown, supra, but also of the denial of food, Payne, supra, (accused was given no food for 24 hours), or sleep, Aschcraft v Tennessee, 322 US 143 (1944) defendant was not permitted to sleep for 36 hours.

Hoess Subjected to Psychological Torment by G.M. Gilbert et al.

Point 4: A third fact, psychological influence, was also accorded great weight by the Court. Although the Court stated that a voluntary statement need not be volunteered, it refused to hold that only physical brutality was impermissible. In Watts vs Indiana, 338 US 49, 53 (1949), the Court said that:

“if the confession is the product of sustained pressure by the police, it does not issue of free choice. When a suspect speaks because he is overborne, it is immaterial whether he has been subjected to a physical or mental ordeal. Eventual yielding to questioning under such circumstances is plainly the product of the suction process of interrogation and therefore the reverse of voluntary.”

Hoess et al. Denied the Right to Consult With Family, Friends and Counsel

Point 5: In Watts, as in Haley v. Ohio, 332 US 596 (1948), and numerous other cases, the Court paid special attention to whether the accused was denied the aid of family, friends, or counsel. Incommunicado confinement consistently was viewed as coercive. Another form of psychological influence was trickery. Note: See generally White, Police Trickery in Inducing Confessions, 127 U. Pa. L. Rev. 581 (1979).

Furthermore:

Threats to Deport the Family of Hoess to the USSR Illegal

“The Court also recognized the pressure inherent in such psychological techniques as sustained interrogation, Ashcraft, supra, and the threat of mob violence. [In Höss’ case, the threat of handing his family over to the Russians would qualify] Payne, supra, (defendant was told that 30 or 40 people would be waiting to get him unless he confessed). The Court was also concerned about rewards and inducements to confess, which had been condemned in Hopt, supra. New techniques as well as old were carefully scrutinized. For example, in Leyra v Denno, 347 US 556 (1954), the Court took exception to the use of a trained psychiatrist to extract a confession through skillful and suggestive question.” (RE: HOESS: see: Gustav Gilbert, et al., etc.)

Denial of Counsel of His Choice Before and During Interrogation

Point 6: Höss was interrogated without benefit of counsel. “the Court considered whether the accused (Leyra v Denno) was aware or had been appraised of his “right to counsel, as well as his right to remain silent.

The Case of Hoess et al. Subject to Reversal

Point 7: In reviewing confession cases, the Court made it clear that it would overturn a finding that a confession was voluntary if there was undisputed contrary evidence in the record. Chambers v Florida 309 US 227, 228, (1940)

Point 8:

“the voluntariness standard required a case by case scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding a particular confession to determine if the methods by which it was obtained comported with due process. The Court considered both the police conduct in procuring the confession and the defendant’s ability to withstand coercion: therefore, the ‘totality of the circumstances’ test that was set forth in Fikes v Alabama, 352, US 191 (1957) was determinative of the voluntariness of the confession.”

Reversal Even If Accusations True

Point 9:

“It soon became the rule that even if sufficient evidence existed from sources independent of the confession that the accused committed the crime as charged, the dent of the confession that the accused committed the crime charged, the conviction was still to be reversed if a coerced confession had been admitted at trial.”

Höss’ first confession was not admitted at his trial in Poland, but another confession which had been obtained by similar methods used by his communist interrogators—Note: However, such confessions were admitted during the Malmedy trial—a clear violation of human rights and due process). On these issues see: Payne v Arkansas, 356 US 560, 568 (1958)

Use of Torture Described as Barbaric

Point 10:

“The use of torture and other barbaric practices to elicit confessions was not confined to American police stations. European police were known to employ tactics that were as offensive to human dignity as those used in America. Thus, following world war II, it was not surprising that France, Germany and Italy adopted exclusionary rules to cover evidence obtained by due process violations. SEE generally Pakter, Exclusionary Rules in France, Germany and Italy, 9 Hastings Int’l & Compar. L. Rev. 1, 7 (1985).

This point is important because it confirms that an accused right’s were violated prior to this date (as well as afterward).

Hoess Was Denied Counsel at the Time His Confession Was Taken

SPANO v. NEW YORK:

“Four concurring judges expressed greater concern about the fact that the defendant Spano had been indicted and was refused permission to see his attorney than about the voluntariness of the confession under the totality of the circumstances.

Federal Standards the Same

Finally, it must be noted that during the period that the state confession cases were decided under the voluntariness approach, federal cases were governed by an identical standard. A coerced confession that violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment also violated the due process clause of the 5th amendment. But in Federal Court, a confession might even be rejected even without a finding of coercion!

Conclusion: The legal and human rights of Rudolf Höss and other accused German defendants were denied, as was due process. The IMT had been specifically formed de post facto according to principles which contravened all conventional rights and other accepted rules relating to due process during the course of the trials held in Germany, Russia, Poland, et al., in the period 1945-1965, which were a perversion of justice and a betrayal of the legal process.

“[General Cramer, Judge Advocate General] recommended that the normal trial procedures and evidentiary systems used in military courts, which were already highly favorable to the prosecution, should be tipped even further in that direction. In war crimes trials ‘all evidence which has probative force in the minds of reasonable men’ should be made admissible, and defendants would lose the right of appeal. All sentences, including death sentences, were to be ‘executed within 24 hours’.” (emph. added)

Also, according to the same source cited above, when Colonel R. Ammi Cutter, an attorney temporarily on duty in the war department, examined the trial procedures which were recommended by another young attorney of Jewish descent (Murray C Bernays) who was related to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter,— he at first described the proposals as “ingenious,” but he was troubled by the “fairly radical departures from existing legal theories” that it embodied.”

Nevertheless, Bernay’s “Conspiracy” theory was eventually adopted by the allied governments. Furthermore, other groups had taken an interest in the trials. According to Smith:

“On 5 October, Bernays took the opportunity at a routine conference with Green Hackworth, the State Department Legal Chief, to put before him the essential features of his plan. Hackworth, who had been holding to a rigidly conservative definition of what constituted a war crime, had recently come under heavy pressure to find a more elastic interpretation which would meet the demands of groups such as the American Jewish Conference and the War Refugee Board.” (p. 57)

Note: The WRB was accused of being a communist front organization and had been formed by Henry Morgenthau junior, who was also of Jewish descent and a close advisor to President Roosevelt.

In fact, every right which we today hold as inalienable was suppressed by the allies when the issue involved the prosecution of accused Germans. Again, according to Smith, (Department) G-1

“recommended amending the provisions of the American Rules of Land Warfare (FM 27-10), relating to an appeal to superior orders as a covering defense against conviction in military courts… Since the British had already amended their Manual of Military Law in this sense, the JAG officer thought it only reasonable that the Americans do the same so that we should not furnish the war criminals with ammunition.” (!)

This grotesque act was approved just prior to the end of the war, in order to deny accused Germans a legal basis from which to conduct their defense when arrested and charged by the allies.

In other words, strip away all pretenses to human rights and judicial process and deny the accused the opportunity to conduct a proper defense against monstrous charges and accusations which would take more than the “Dream Team” to successfully contest. Much like tying a boxer’s hands behind his back before sending him into the ring. Justice?